OTTAWA — The federal government has agreed to pay more than $160-million to settle an eight-year-old sex discrimination complaint by nurses working for the Canada Pension Plan.

Lawyers for the nurses and Treasury Board reached an agreement in principle about two weeks ago, but the settlement was kept under wraps until Tuesday, when they asked the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to endorse it and make it legally binding.

Laurence Armstrong, a Victoria lawyer, who represents most of the nurses, said the government has estimated the settlement at $160-million.

But that doesn’t include additional payments to reduce taxes owed on the settlement payout, or the higher pensions the nurses will now receive — which could push the cost to more than $200-million.

Because the settlement covers discrimination dating back more than three decades, a few long-service CPP nurses could collect as much as $250,000.

Nurses who worked at least six months for the CPP in 1978-89 will receive a lump sum of $20,000. Those who were employed in 1989-99 will get a further $40,000, while those who worked for the CPP from 1999 to the present will get an additional $16,500 for every year of service.

As well, every nurse will receive $2,000 for pain and suffering. That’s in addition to the $2.3-million the tribunal awarded them for pain and suffering last fall.

Exactly how many nurses will receive compensation is not yet known: 417 signed a human rights complaint originally filed in 2004 by Ruth Walden, an Ottawa nurse, but another 250 who were not named in the formal complaint are also eligible, Mr. Armstrong said. The number could increase if retired nurses who haven’t yet been identified come forward.

After eight years of legal wrangling, the nurses are “very pleased” by the settlement, the lawyer said.

“One of the things that was important to us was finality. Otherwise, we would have just spent years in appeals again. This way, it’s a done deal and they can get on with their lives.”

The predominantly female nurses earn $50,000-$60,000; they screen applicants to determine if they are eligible for CPP disability benefits. They say they perform essentially the same core functions as a male-dominated group of CPP doctors who are paid twice as much.

In 2007, the human rights tribunal ruled the pay differential amounted to sex discrimination. Nonetheless, a second tribunal decision in 2009 denied the nurses compensation for wage loss or pain and suffering.

The Federal Court of Canada overturned the 2009 decision, a ruling upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal, which sent the matter back to the tribunal to determine the appropriate compensation.

Negotiations between the two parties began about three months ago. Initially, the nurses were seeking back pay equivalent to 80% of the salary earned by CPP doctors, but ultimately settled for less.

The nurses’ new bargaining agent, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), will now have to negotiate a new salary scale.

The CPP nurses came under PIPSC’s jurisdiction about a year ago, after the tribunal ordered the government to place them in a nursing category.

Until then, they had been classified as administrators and represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Mr. Armstrong said the PSAC not only refused to help the nurses, it actively blocked their efforts to shift into a nursing category, since that would have shifted them into PIPSC’s jurisdiction.

He added it is unlikely the nurses’ settlement will affect wages paid to other federal nurses.

“This was a pretty unique circumstance. The discrimination was pretty stark. You had this group of men being treated so vastly differently than this group of women, and yet they’re both doing the same work.”
Postmedia News